Jellies

Jellyfish are horrid.

Perfectly horrid.

They're balls of mindless hunger, shooting little harpoons into tasty guppies, inedible kelp and the bare knees of children too slow or ignorant to avoid the little mermaid manes of these scarlet scourges. So watching a horde of them die, glowing their last in a phosphorescent low tide was satisfying.

Or at least it was until my girlfriend waded into the receding ocean, scooped the harmless blue jellies up in her soft white hands and deposited them one quivering mass at a time into deeper brine.

Reeking algea stuck to her shapely, fresh shaved legs and rough particles of sand clung to her dainty toes.

I touched one of the jellies with the very edge of a cautious fingernail. The creature acknowledged me with the weak light of primitive nerves. Squeamish, I left him to fate and the pull of a careless moon.